


The Fealty of a Swan

by drelfina



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, Gen, M/M, Wingfic, dubious everything, fairy-tales, swan-maiden, wing-fic of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drelfina/pseuds/drelfina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I thought you were myths," the human said, and surely, surely if they thought that, they wouldn't pick up his feathers like that - </i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Except he's not a myth. </p><p>And when M finds a creature whose intelligence and magic and loyalty is guaranteed to the service of Queen and Country... </p><p>Well. Why not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fealty of a Swan

It was his own fault, of course. 

Swan-kin like him were long-lived, and hence he hardly found it difficult to dismiss all other creatures as not really worth notice, if he wasn't interested. And honestly, he had been only interested in the lake. 

He'd been going there, every several decades, just to swim - the lake was cold, and the plant growth there was fascinating, the kelp was all the sweeter for not being eaten often. 

It'd always been isolated. 

This time, when he'd went, though, it had seemed less forested. There were paths - shining and flat all the way, and moving objects. New creatures? 

He landed by the side of the path, exhilirated by the speed of the things, shining metal and bright eyes of demons; when one, a hundred times his size, sped past, he honked and flapped back , falling into the undergrowth. 

Alright, so they were dangerous. 

He should have left then. He should have gone home, gone to another lake - but hind sight was twenty-twenty wasn't it? 

He had instead retreated clumsily into the undergrowth, and then shed his feathers because as a swan he couldn't take off from the ground easily, and made his way through dense undergrowth. The trees had gone, somehow, leading to thick, dense vegetation that was hard to waddle through, hence his bipedal form. 

He folded his skin up by the lake side and dived in, calming himself from the slight fright.

The water was the same, as always, and the kelp growth prolific. 

He gathered up a bunch of it to take to the bank and eat, but when he went to where he'd put his feathers, they were gone. 

Instead, there was one of those huge metallic creatures, and a human. 

The human had his feathers. 

"That's mine," he said, dropping the kelp, reaching for the feathers. 

The human looked at him, and ran fingers over the white feathers - and he tried not to shudder. 

"I thought you were myths," the human said, and surely, surely if they thought that, they wouldn't pick up his feathers like that - 

"Give it back, please," he said, not begging, but oh god so close to it. "That is mine. What do you want? I will give you riches, power. You humans like that, don't you? Jewels, gold, just give it back -" 

The human's eyes were calculative, and the human turned, and the metal creature beside them opened a gill flap, a yawning darkness within as the human hid away his feathers. 

"No! Give it back -" 

"I don't want riches. I want information. And Loyalty," the human said, eyes sharp. "Get in." 

He choked, and wanted to protest, he didn't want to be eaten, didn't _want_ anything but his feathers; he had to get his feathers back. 

The human gestured imperiously, and he went.

**** 

"You need a name. hmmm." 

"I have one." 

"The fact that you're a supernatural creature... hm. Icarus." 

"I am not Greek," he said, flatly. 

The human ignored him. "You flew too close to the sun, my boy," the human said. "Now you're mine." 

*****

It turned out that the human was named M. It wasn't his birth-name, but it was his real name - a rank and title that had become his identity, his body this strange thing called MI6. And in the years that followed, Icarus realised that M trusted no one, couldn't trust anyone, not even his own followers - the only thing he could trust was Icarus. 

That dubious honour, Icarus could have done very well without. 

*****

Humans have always had a thing for flight - and with it, they learned how to drop killing things, things that suffocated and destroyed. 

Icarus couldn't leave London, as much as he wanted to. 

It was where M was, and where his feathers were. And the magic that bound him to his feathers bound him to M, bound him with a loyalty where he couldn't speak unless allowed to, secrets he had to keep even though he didn't want to know why. 

He grew to know the context, the reasons, the people, behind each secret, and hated it. 

Hated it all, King, Queen and Country. 

***** 

The first time M died, Icarus thought he was finally free. 

But a new human walked into the damp basement where Icarus worked, on the huge machines that called for deft touches, the knowledge of something far beyond human, holding a single white flight feather. 

"No," Icarus said, staring at that, the white gleam of it in the half-dark. His heart clenched, twisted. The feather's base was hollow, bloodless, and he could feel his own face pale. 

The human - a man, he learnt the right words now, a man - placed the feather delicately on a console free of dust and scribblings. "Report in the morning at 8am sharp, Icarus." 

After that, Icarus knew that there was no freedom. 

*****

M made him fly once, to France. Sat him down in a small seat next to him, large hands folding over Icarus' fists.

A flight that would take him a day (and no time at all) if he could go on his own wings, but instead he was trapped in a hulking, dark hull of a metal creature, round and claustrophobic. 

It wans't the same. It wasn't the same - there was no feel of the wind under the movement, there was noise but no sun, the air was stale and sharp and too warm, burning his mouth and nose and he threw up on the man's lap. 

"I hate flying," he said, later, much later, when he could make himself open his eyes. 

They took the train back.

*****

The machines got smaller, refined, more clever. He knew how to make them work, but he hadn't had the materials - now he did, and the algorithms danced under his fingers as he breathed life into them, watched the colours and the numbers swirl like angled flight feathers, dust motes in the sunlight. 

The numbers and thoughts could fly where he could not, and it had been years but Icarus still could feel the nakedness. 

Some mornings, he would go up to the top of the building, with its grey horrible stone, covered in its grey horrible smog, and spread his hands as the sun came up. 

Naked, alone, cold, it would have been so easy to take another step, and never come back.

But his feathers called to him, a loyalty binding him hard to the earth, worse than the way humans were bound to earth and steel - he was bound to an institution. 

He could never take that step. 

**** 

Queen and Country. 

It wasn't for Queen and Country - but he worked for MI6, took her moods, the insults, and praise. Caresses in the night because there was nowhere else to go, and kisses of light from the machines that purred under his hands. 

Machines and gadgets, he made them as he was instructed, and because he was loyal, he was bound to serve, he wove the cool Northwind under his fingers, the Wise East Wind trapped under his hair, the bitter Southwind on his breath and the sweet chill of West Wind from his tears into everything he made. 

_Come back safe_ , said his tears, into darts. 

_Slay thine enemies,_ said his blood, etched into films of tiny cameras. 

They left his hands, his labs, and he would touch his feather, the single, white feather, and feel the distant thrill of the arctic wind, years and years ago. 

****

The woman M was different. 

Acerbic. Cold, and she had come down once to see him, just looking at him, the tall man that Icarus called Q by her side. 

She said nothing, and brought no feathers, but when she left it was like the brief breath of North Wind. 

Icarus didn't know where she hid his feathers, but after the explosion, she called him into her temporary office, an empty thing full of concrete and no-walls, steel everywhere. 

"Q," she said, slapping a file into his hands. "Take the department. We need that hard-drive." 

On her desk, was a porcelain dog. 

When he glanced down, he could _feel_ the powdered remainds of feathers in it, under the glaze. 

Dead and gone, dead and gone. 

He looked up at her, shaken to the bones, and she said nothing. 

****

There was something about Bond's eyes, cold and icy blue, but it was like the glaciers of the northpole, the way blue ice was frozen for miles and miles around, reflecting depths of danger and death. 

When they touched, Q felt something burn, a heat he hadn't felt for a long time.

"Good luck on your mission, 007, and please do try to bring back the equipment in one piece." 

 

*****

The Queen is dead. Long Live the King. 

***** 

Gareth Mallory didn't know. 

He didn't know because when Q next went into the office, the bulldog was gone, the office was done up in dark woods and traditional carpets, and on a stuffed cuckatoo, was white feathers. 

"Like it?" he said, mildly. "the old M's things, it's kind of strange isn't it?" 

He doesn't know. Q doesn't tell him.

That morning, Q was on the rooftop,and the feathers, old and dusty as they'd looked on the dead bird, were white and immaculate as Q drew them up, onto his fingers. Feeling his fingers slip and fuse, and when he spread, feathers raked across the shadows.

The draw of them were familiar, as he pulled them over his arm, huge swaths of feathers beating against the sky. Trapping the wind against him again, whispering the song of the winds - North South East West -against his ears, and he could spread, spread, _spread_.

When he flexed his fingers - wings, they were wings - he could feel them. Old, dead feathers, gone and scattered. 

"Q." 

Q turned around, tugging the rest of his feathers over his back. "Bond. What did you want?" 

Bond was staring at him, but he didn't look surprised, a small box in his hands. 

"Are you not surprised?" Q asked. Spreading out his arms ( _wings. His wings_ ). "Are you not shocked, terrified by what I am?" He laughed, and the sound wasn't human. 

His true voice. 

"I knew what you were," Bond said, and he took a step forward. "Are you leaving?" 

"Of course I am. I have been bound here, stuck here for more lifetimes than I want. Can need." Q - whose name was not Q, was not Icarus - stretched out, at the grey smog of the sky. 

In the shadows, his wings looked dark - almost black. 

"Don't you need this?" Bond said, and he opened the box, revealing the ugly porcelain dog. 

Q blinked. Turned his arms - wings - to see - missing flight feathers, plucked away. 

_Come home_ the wind ruffled through his wings. 

But his wings wouldn't be able to carry him. 

"And you would give them back to me?" Q asked, suspiciously. warily. Bond shrugged, but his eyes were blue, like the ice of the arctic. 

Cold, like the cool north wind. 

His hand had gripped a gun that Q had wept blood into, once. 

"I would, for a price," Bond said, and he stepped forward, reaching out to curl his hand to the back of Q's neck, ignoring the wings slamming into his sides, as Q flapped, startled. 

His hand was warm, earthy, burning like the sun, and Q gasped, into Bond's mouth. 

The bulldog fell, shattered, and the powdered feathers blew up like dust, like ash. 

"Was that your price," Q asked, feeling feathers settle, all around him, down his neck, over his belly. "A- a kiss?" 

"That was my price," Bond said, not caring that he was standing in shards of his old mistress' soul. "That is all I ask." 

The wind picked up. Q spread his wings, felt the sunlight burn against him, down shifting, over him, tight in a way he had almost forgotten. The way his bones rearranged, lightened, and the wind could blow him away.

And there was a harsh cry, of a thousand swans, burning whoops of notes, echoing in the sky, and then a rush of feathers, heavy beats that blew dust and wind into Bond's eyes. 

And then Q was gone. 

*** 

They had to find a new Q , of course. Q hadn't bothered to find a successor, before stepping off into the Thames. 

There had been no reason, none whatsoever, for him to commit suicide.

Bond said nothing, even when Eve dropped a small shard of a bulldog's ear on his desk, gripped his shoulder in sympathy. 

Two months, later, when the funeral was over, MI6 was running again, Bond found a single white flight feather on his window sill of his new apartment.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Swan maidens:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_maiden) Because selkies were overdone, and it's a perfect reason for why Q hates to fly. 
> 
> Also, the great [messypeaches](http://archiveofourown.org/users/messypeaches) drew that wonderful picture for this. I asked her for this pic and she drew it and I had to write BETTER to make sure it lived up to the awesome that is this gorgeous art.


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